The Mitscums of iJir Fiihirc. 261 



There are special collections on the iKnmdar}' line l)etween art and 

 ethnology, the manner of best installation for which has scarcely yet 

 been determined. The Louvre admits within its walls a museum of 

 ship models ( Musee de Marine). South Kensington includes musical 

 instruments, and many other objects equall}' appropriate in an ethno- 

 logical collection. Other art nuiseums take up arms and armor, selected 

 costumes, shoes, and articles of household use. vSuch objects, like por- 

 celains, laces, medals, and metal work, appeal to the art museum admin- 

 istrator through their decorations and graceful forms. For their uses he 

 cares presumably nothing. As a consequence of this feeling only arti- 

 cles of artistic excellence have been saved, and much has gone to destruc- 

 tion which would be of the utmost importance to those wdio are now 

 studying the history of human thought in the past. 



On the other hand, there is much in art mu.seums which might to much 

 better purpose be delivered to the ethnologist for use in his exhibition 

 cases. There is also much which the art museums, tied as they often 

 are to traditionary methods of installation, might learn from the scien- 

 tific museums. 



Many of the arrangements in the European art collections are calcu- 

 lated to send cold shivers down the back of a sensitive visitor. The 

 defects of these arrangements have been well described by a German 

 critic, W. Biirger. 



Our museums [he writes] are the veritable graveyards of arts, in which have 

 been heaped up, with a tumulous-Hke promiscuousness, the remains which have 

 been carried thither. A Venus is placed side by side with a Madonna, a satyr next 

 to a saint. Ltxther is in close proximity to a Pope, a painting of a lady's chamber 

 next to that of a church. Pieces executed for churches, palaces, city halls, for a 

 particular edifice, to teach some moral or historical truth, designed for some especial 

 light, for some well-studied surrounding, all are hung pellmell upon the walls of 

 some noncommital gallery^a kind of posthumous asylum, where a people, no 

 longer capable of producing works of art, come to admire this magnificent gallery 

 of debris. 



When a mu.seum building has been provided, and the nucleus of a col- 

 lection and an administrative staff are at hand, the work of museum- 

 building begins, and this work, it is to be hoped, will not soon reach an 

 end. A finished museum is a dead nuiseiun, and a dead museiun is a 

 useless mitsetim. One thing should l>e kept prominently in mind by any 

 organization wdiicli intends to found and maintain a nuiseura, that the 

 work will never be finished; that when the collections cease to grow, 

 they begin to decay. A friend relating an experience in vSoutli Kensing- 

 ton, said: "I applied to a man who .sells photographs of such edifices for 

 pictures of the main building. He had none. 'What, no photographs 

 of the South Kensington Mu.seum!' I exclaimed, with some impatience. 

 'Why, sir,' replied the man mildly, 'you see the mttseuni doesn't stand 

 still long enough to be photographed.' And so indeed it seems," con- 



